Monthly Archives: July 2016

In a recent case, a federal district court ruled that an employer didn’t violate the Comprehensive Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) — even though an employee who resigned from the company claimed that she never received notices that she was entitled to continue her health insurance benefits.

Under the law:

A plan administrator is required to give each participant a notice of certain health insurance coverage rights 44 days after a “qualifying event,” such as the termination of the participant’s employment.

If a plan administrator fails to provide the required COBRA notice, it may be “personally liable to such participant or beneficiary in the amount of up to $110 per day from the day of such failure.”

When it comes to fuel a workout, there’s a common pitfall: Eating too much to compensate. But not eating enough to fuel those squats or spin classes can also backfire.

So what’s the best way to eat to ensure you make the most of your workout? It turns out, setting up the body for the best recovery and muscle repair is a matter of timing.

Although exercising is no excuse to pig out, skipping meals after a workout can also be counterproductive, said Melinda Manore, an exercise scientist at Oregon State University and a former member of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition (PCFSN) Science Board, who has done extensive research on nutrition, metabolism and exercise.

I recently had the chance to sit down with Chris Britt, the CEO of Chime. Chime is an innovative company in the FinTech space that aspires to be the banking solution for Millennials.

There are several outstanding companies in mobile banking/fintech space right now, such as Acorns, Atom, Robinhood, Betterment and Wealthfront. It’s a particularly exciting time to be in fintech for entrepreneurs and investors.

Why did you decide to start Chime?

Chris Britt: Millennials hate the traditional banking options. Of the 10 LEAST loved brands among Millennials, four are financial institutions you know well – Bank of America, Chase, Citi and Wells Fargo. They’re moving away from bank branches and want to manage everything in their lives on their phone, including their finances.

Artificial grass for your home is more than just good looks, it’s also about being kinder to Mother Earth. This eco-friendly choice for your lawn and garden goes beyond reducing the ways that you maintain your home. It also can be a great way to rid the planet of pollution, conserve water and put more money back into your bank account.

Conserve Water Using Artificial Turf

Maintaining a green lawn through times of drought proves difficult. But there are unique techniques and products on the market today to make your home and lawn aesthetically pleasing no matter what Mother Nature throws your way. If you’re concerned about the environment, you probably know there are a number of ways you can conserve water such as limiting your time in the shower. You’ll be able to save even more water using artificial turf. Because the artificial landscape doesn’t need want to the natural liquid to ensure its ability to stay green, you’ll be able to save a significant amount of water on your lawn yearly.

The marketing side of sports is banking hard on origin stories of late. Obviously, cute babies help too.

Nike’s “Unlimited Future,” by Wieden + Kennedy, opens on a nursery full of future sports stars, including diaper-clad LeBron James, Serena Williams, Neymar, Zhou Qi and Mo Farah. The babies gurgle to the faint music of Chopin’s Berceuse, Op. 57, playing from a plastic radio.

Then the door swings open. Brusquely. A man in a suit and leather shoes stops the jam, and the crowd goes silent.

“Listen up, babies!” he growls, before kicking off the motivational speech that will shape these tiny future-athlete brains in ways that would make Freud fist-pump (as a lone baby does, at the very end).

It’s true, event season is in full swing and it’s probably true to say that your diary is looking rather full for the next 6 weeks or so. But if you were honest with yourself, are they all really going to benefit you and if the answer is ‘yes’ what can you be doing to give your business the competitive edge?

Business events, exhibitions and trade shows can be excellent marketing opportunities, enabling you to meet with your audience face to face, building personal relationships and showcasing your products and services in all their physical glory.

Haven’t you found that with the rise of faceless digital communication, a face to face interaction suddenly seems like a daunting prospect? But now is the time, lets ditch the digital and get back to basics, there’s nothing like a sales pitch to get your heart racing, and ultimately boost your confidence; it can remind you of how passionate you are about your business.

When you start telling your friends and family about your new small business, at least a few of them are bound to ask — perhaps only partly in jest — about a “family discount” on your products.

What’s a small business owner to do when family, friends and even casual acquaintances ask for discounts or freebies? If you offer your services or products for free or for a deep discount, you may hurt yourself financially, and over time, you may even begin to resent people you love. On the other hand, you don’t want the people in your social circle to think that you are selfish or ungrateful, especially if they have supported your entrepreneurial endeavors.

Though there is no one-size-fits-all solution that will work for all entrepreneurs or in every situation, there are lessons to be learned from fellow business owners who have faced the same dilemma. Here’s how to turn a potentially uncomfortable conversation into a transparent and productive transaction that honors some of your most valued relationships.

We met Alex, who had interviewed with the same company twice. “The first time I had an interview at that company, the HR Manager was very nice and very engaged in our conversation,” said Alex.

“She told me that the job I was interviewing for was one of their highest-priority job openings,” Alex said. “I had a great conversation with the hiring manager, too, but they ended up hiring someone else because they needed someone with more experience than I had back then.”

Alex left that interview process with a good feeling. The HR Manager, Allison, told Alex, “We will be sure to contact you if we have another opening that is a match for your experience.”

Upthere isn’t your parents’ personal cloud storage service. The team behind the service, which is coming out of beta today with $77 million in financing from a slew of investors, believes that the cloud should be your primary storage and not just a place for keeping backups or helping you sync data between machines.

Upthere wants you to think of its service as the canonical location where your data lives. It’s now generally available for OS X/MacOS, Android and iOS, with the Windows and web apps hitting beta today.

The company had some help getting there with new financing led by KPCB and Western Digital, along with Floodgate, Elevation Partners, GV, NTT Docomo Ventures and Square 1 Bank.

Paramount has broken ranks with other Hollywood studios and agreed to ditch contentious contracts that restricted who could watch its movies on pay-TV in Europe.

Europe’s top regulator said Tuesday that Paramount will now allow customers across the European Union to access pay-TV content that had previously been restricted to the U.K. and Ireland.

Last year, the regulator accused Paramount and five competitors of illegally curbing European access to movies and TV shows through anti-competitive contracts with Britain’s Sky TV (SKYAY), part of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.

The other five studios the regulator fingered are: Disney (DIS), Comcast (CCV)-owned NBCUniversal, Sony (SNE), Twentieth Century Fox, also owned by 21st Century Fox (FOX), and Warner Bros. (Warner Bros. is a unit of Time Warner (TWX), which owns CNN.)